Solid waste separation equipment faces many maintenance hazards. The single biggest issue is that solid waste tends to contain long, thin, flexible items, such as ropes, cords, cables, linens, and plastic film that can wrap around any rotating shaft exposed to the material stream. These “wrapping hazards” will also drape over any exposed surfaces, jam up air systems, wrap on head pulleys, drape on exposed cross members, plug screen holes in trommels or vibratory screens, and cause other problems to solid waste processing equipment, making maintenance necessary. Disc screens, which are composed of a series of rotating shafts used to screen materials by size or shape, are particularly prone to wrapping and jamming on these materials. As machines wrap more, separation efficiency goes down, parts wear out faster, and jamming hazard increases. Thus, disc screens must be frequently cleaned.
Under the current art, any wrapped material on a screen requires manual cleaning, involving shutting down the entire material sorting system, de-energizing the entire system, and then locking out the equipment being cleaned. After the system is de-energized and locked out, people have to enter a confined space, tie off to protect against falls, and then manually climb over a difficult terrain to cut off wrappings. The whole process can take hours of labor for multiple people in a large solid waste separation facility, and involves many safety hazards. In addition to safety and performance degradation considerations, cleaning expenses on a large material sorting system may amount to over $200,000 a year, plus workers' compensation.
Thus there is a need in the art for a sorting apparatus which addresses the above issues. Provided herein is a robotic cleaner that would be a significant improvement in a solid waste separation facility, as it would save labor, make the system safer, decrease downtime associated with de-energizing the system, and improve system performance.